Forgotten Story: The impact of "animal-rights" campaigns on the Inuit

by Alan Herscovici (Special for the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada)

In October 1983, the European Economic Community banned the import of sealskin products. It was the climax of a long international protest campaign that made Greenpeace a household name and established doe-eyed, "whitecoat" pups as the symbol of growing concern about protecting nature.

Rarely mentioned in the stacks of sensationalized news reports that trace the twenty-year "seal wars," however, were the people who had most to lose in this debate—although they lived thousands of miles from the ice floes of Newfoundland and didn't even hunt harp-seal pups.

Seals (mainly ringed seals) had always provided food, clothing, and other essentials for Inuit living in small camps along the vast Arctic coasts. In the 1950s, however, government policies to improve health and educational facilities resulted in Canadian Inuit being resettled in larger communities, often far from traditional hunting grounds.

By good fortune, new tanning methods developed in the 1960s allowed sealskins to be used for commercial fur garments, boosting international demand and prices. NWT ringed-seal skins, worth barely $1.00 before 1961, were bringing $14.00 per pelt by 1966. This money was used to buy supplies from the south, including power boats, gasoline, and snowmobiles that allowed Inuit hunters to travel farther and bring back more food for their communities.

A first wave of anti-sealing protests (sparked by the 1964 broadcast of a film about the Atlantic "whitecoat" hunt) reduced pelt prices to about $4.00 by 1968, and U.S. markets were closed by the Marine Mammals Protection Act, in 1972. But European markets grew and prices rose steadily again through the 1970s, reaching record levels in 1976 ($24.00 per pelt). That year, seal-skin sales brought over one million dollars into the twenty-nine Inuit villages across the NWT. Even more valuable, the seal hunt produced 1.5 million kilos of meat—food that was more nutritious and far less expensive than imported supplies available from remote northern stores.

It appeared that fashion markets for sealskins would allow Arctic Inuit to successfully adapt their culture and economy to their new conditions. By selling sealskins (a by-product of local food production), Inuit could enjoy modern health care, education, and other advantages of living in larger communities, while maintaining their economic autonomy and hunting-based traditions. Service or industrial jobs remained scarce in remote northern communities, but no Inuit hunter was "unemployed" during this period.

Protests against the Atlantic "whitecoat" hunt reached new levels of intensity over the next few years, however, as Brigitte Bardot and Greenpeace arrived on the scene to bolster campaigns launched by Brian Davies' International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).

At first, most Inuit ignored the publicity battles on Canada's east coast: Inuit hunted adult ringed seals, with harpoons or rifles; they didn't club harp-seal pups. The Inuit hunted for survival. They didn't feel "cut off from nature" and they needed no lessons in environmental awareness. This quarrel among competing groups of inscrutible white folks was a Qallunaat problem; Inuit assumed that it wouldn't affect them.

They were wrong. Prices for NWT sealskins crashed in 1977. A brief resurgence in 1980-82 was snuffed out for good with the 1983 European import ban.

The impact on NWT communities which relied heavily on sealskin sales was swift and harsh: Broughton Islanders saw their total cash income drop from over $92,000 to $13,500 in two years. In Pangnirtung, collective income fell from $200,000 to about $42,00 from 1981/82 to 1983/84. In the high-Arctic community of Resolute, income slipped from $55,000 to $2,400. In all, the combined annual earnings of NWT Inuit hunters from sealskin sales are now estimated at perhaps $17,000, compared with up to $1 million as recently as 1981.

Income statistics, however, barely suggest the far-reaching nutritional, social, and cultural consequences of cutting hunters off from the land. Without money from sealskin sales to pay for equipment, gas, and repairs, hunters can no longer provide sufficient meat for their communities. Increased consumption of store-bought processed and "junk" food brings serious health problems. Men who were autonomous hunters just ten years ago have been reduced to relying on welfare payments. Those who do find wage employment have less time to hunt. Complex food-sharing relationships which reinforced social integration therefore break down, as does the transmission of traditional skills and knowledge, the heart of a culture.

Hunters can no longer serve as role models or tutors for young people, many of whom now spend their days "hanging-out" at the store, without direction or hope.

As Rhoda Inuksuk, then president of Inuit Tapirisat of Canada, told the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs,

One of the disasters that has happened as a result is youth suicide...we have youth problems, drug and alcohol abuse, violence. There is very little employment and when you are hit with something like [the loss of sealskin markets] you are bound to see these problems come up as a result...

According to Holman Island hunter David Omingmak, "The life has been taken away from the people, and they don't know why."

The world moves on. With media strategies and fund-raising techniques honed during the "seal wars," animal-rights campaigners have turned their sights on new targets: trappers, medical research, animal agriculture. In the words of Stephen Best, a former IFAW campaign organizer, a new "protest industry" was born; it is now possible to pursue a career as a "professional animal-rights activist."

The world moves on. Brian Davies denies that it was hypocritical to destroy the livelihood of Inuit hunters, although he continues to eat meat and collects a six-figure salary and expenses. (The financial structure of IFAW's international affiliates is so complex that it is difficult to determine his full remuneration.) Patrick Moore, president of Greenpeace at the peak of the "seal wars," is now a commercial salmon farmer in British Columbia.

The world moves on. Brigitte Bardot recently alienated European environmentalists with her (fourth) marriage to an extreme right-wing French politician. Meanwhile, fish stocks are collapsing and some Atlantic seals receive contraceptive injections at tax-payers' expense, while health services for Canadian women are cut back.

Animal-rights activists claim to be ushering in a new era of moral concern, to be "widening the circle of compassion". They call for a "new ethic" to control the relentless advance of science and technology that threatens human culture and nature. But for the Inuit, animal-rights campaigns are just the latest in a long litany of religious, industry, and government policies imposed by outsiders—policies which ignore Inuit values and realities, and threaten the survival of one of the world's last remaining aboriginal hunting cultures.

The world moves on, and the European Union has now resolved to ban the import of wild furs in January 1995. The debate about sealing is "old news". But across the Arctic, Inuit communities continue to pay the price...